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Strike One!

Featured on July 16, 2014

The first fragment of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 strikes the planet Jupiter while the others (including the rocky objects in the foreground) line up for their own collisions in this artist's concept. The impact took place on July 16, 1994, with the others following over the next few days. Jupiter's gravity had shattered the comet into about 20 large chunks plus countless smaller bits of debris. They hit Jupiter with the energy of thousands of hydrogen bombs, leaving dark scars in the planet's upper atmosphere that persisted for weeks. [Don Davis/NASA]